prone to enthusiasms….

Bad Software Project: X-Rite Registrations

I’ve decided to start calling out bad software design. We’ve got to start complaining about these issues or things will never improve. Today’s example:

Registered my Colormunki with X-Rite yesterday. Their registration process insists that I connect the device, apparently so it can pull off the serial number. But the connection didn’t bother to collect the software version (I had to guess between 1.0 and 1.02–hard to see why they’d care) or my operating system. This is likely a bad spec, but it’s also a lazy programmer.

Worse was the picklist they offered for computer operating systems. It included Windows 98, Windows ME, Win XP, and Mac OS9, but didn’t include Win 8, Win 10, or any iteration of OS X since 10.6 (I have 10.12).

More: They wanted all kinds of information about my non-existent job. They also made assumptions about my job that didn’t apply to what I did for a living before I retired. Filled all required fields with the equivalent of n/a.

This for a fairly inexpensive device with no moving parts that’s unlikely ever to need maintenance. I registered it mainly to turn off a nag screen. All they really needed was my ID information and the device’s SN.